


Window to the Past

by wonderlandiscrumbling



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of past child abuse, Privacy Invasion, season four
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-04 06:07:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14586633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonderlandiscrumbling/pseuds/wonderlandiscrumbling
Summary: Oswald accidentally stumbles upon Ed's journal, better judgement says to leave it where he found it, but curiosity leads him to wanting to know about his friend's secrets and dreams.





	1. Chapter 1

The circumstances in which Oswald stumbled upon the beaten up faux leather bound book were more or less accidental and had little to nothing to do with him snooping through Ed’s belongings. He’d been bored out of his mind and curious as well as to what all was cluttering up the desk in the study, a desk Oswald used to use until Ed made it his own. Not that Oswald minded, but there were times that his friend’s ‘organized chaos’ drove him the slightest bit insane.

Initially upon finding the book he’d taken it to be another itinerary keeping track of appointments and future Riddler schemes, he’d also hoped in the slightest bit he’d find more God awful suit designs scribbled away. He rolled his eyes thinking of the last time Ed had approached him with a handful of sketches, asking him if he could tailor him some new suits; clothes that he wanted in the most hideous shades of green. This book though was not what he’d thought it would be though.

Upon opening it and skimming through the latest entry he found it was just a plain journal, Ed’s thoughts, and feelings along with word for word the events of the day. Oswald had immediately felt he should close it and put it back where he found it, but the more he skimmed the more interested he found himself when he got to the parts mentioning him. 

He wandered out of the study taking the book with him, he smiled to himself as he read over what his friend thought of him. He was rather surprised to read that Ed held no ill will towards him after the events of the prior year, it was a fact he knew, but having reaffirmation made him feel better. He made his way into the kitchen pouring himself a glass of red wine before making his way into the sitting room to continue his reading. 

Just as he reached an entry involving an Amy Winehouse song and a hallucination of himself, Ed entered the room. He stopped in his tracks, smile dropping as he saw the book Oswald was holding. Oswald froze, eyes widening slightly as he looked up at Ed.

“Is that my journal?” Ed asked slowly, Oswald could tell he was doing his best to remain calm.

The issue being he couldn’t tell if he was on the verge of panicking or being pissed.

“Ed, I’m sorry I just….I was trying to clean up that God awful mess you made of my desk, I thought this was another of your stupid sketch books.” He defended, anger being his immediate go to.

Dramatically he snapped the book closed, still he held onto it, he finished his drink setting the glass on the table as he stood. 

Ed remained in place, he eyed the book as if he were considering just lunging and grabbing it from him. The tension and anxiety emanating from his friend made his curiosity peak about what else the pages could contain.

“You shouldn’t go through my stuff, I thought you trusted me.”

“I do trust you, I just got curious….Besides there’s some interesting things in here.” Oswald said opening the book again.

This time Ed did take a step forward but stopped himself. 

Oswald flipped through the pages, he stopped towards the beginning of the book; he noticed the writing was vastly different on this older page. The writing was awkward, the letters going from too big to too small, the black ink was smeared, the writing most definitely that of a child’s. 

“Dear diary, I hear them fighting again. I know he’s hurting mommy again, I know it’s because of me. He blames her for the way that I am, he says I was born stupid because everybody in her family is stupid….I’m hoping that if I’m quiet enough that daddy won’t come find me, that he won’t….” Oswald trailed off, voice quiet as he stared down at the page. He swallowed hard, this wasn’t what he expected to find.

“Well go on, why stop there? You obviously find this so amusing.” 

Oswald looked up at him, “Ed, I-I didn’t see this part before I swear to you. I’ll put it back, I’m sorry.” 

Ed angrily snatched the book from him, Oswald began nervously picking at his cuticles as he watched the other man. Ed’s hands were shaking the slightest bit as he gripped the book tightly in his hands, tear filled eyes focused on the pages.

“How about this one, maybe you can get a laugh out of this.” He paused for a moment before continuing. “Dear diary, I wish I was dead. Everything hurts, and daddy won’t take me to the hospital this time, he told me if I hadn’t been born then he could be happy. If I was dead, then maybe my parents would still love each other. Even mommy doesn’t want to hug me anymore, she drinks and ignores me now. If I was dead then everybody would finally be happy.”

Ed closed his eyes tightly, “You want to know when I wrote that one, I wrote it on my 9th birthday. It’s a perfect cosmic joke that I was born on April Fool’s Day, don’t you agree?” 

Oswald cautiously approached him, he pulled the book out of his shaking hands and tossed it to the side letting it clatter to the hardwood floor. He wrapped his arms around Ed’s waist and hugged him.

“I’m sorry” He whispered hiding his face against his shoulder.

Ed held him back, body relaxing in his arms. Oswald rubbed a hand along his back, he could feel tears soaking into his dress shirt, but didn’t say a thing about it.

“It’s okay, I’m sorry that I read it, I shouldn’t have gone through your stuff like that. I’m sorry about what they did to you.” 

Ed pulled back, he removed his glasses to angrily rub at his eyes seeming annoyed with himself for his sudden outburst. 

“I didn’t want you to know about any of that.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to look weak.” He stated simply as he placed his glasses back on the bridge of his nose.

“That doesn’t make you weak, Ed you were a child. What they did to you, that wasn’t okay at all. Did anybody ever do anything about it?”

“No, people knew, but they didn’t want to get involved. If they got involved then that would be messy, it’d cause them drama they didn’t want to deal with, so they just talked about it, about our family. I left the day I turned eighteen, moved here, and changed my name.”

Oswald wanted to ask about his original name but decided it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of names what name his friend had been born with. He was Ed Nygma now, that was the important part.

“Are you mad at me?”

“A little bit, embarrassed mostly…..What else did you read?”

He smiled looking away, “I read enough to realize you were full of shit when you told me you didn’t love me.” He said looking back up at him.

He expected irritation or embarrassment, but instead was met with a sly smile. He blushed as he felt Ed’s large hands on his hips pulling him close against him again.

“You got me…. Question is if you still love me.”

“I spent the better part of a year trying to get you out of my system, if I’d been successful then I wouldn’t have given up revenge just to save your life. I know what you always say about people like us and love, but I can’t help it. I love you, I always will love you.”

It was a truth that always scared the Hell out of him. He used to hope and pray he could make himself stop loving him, but he couldn’t. It frustrated him knowing that for them being in love was dangerous, that when you loved anybody that automatically put them at risks of being killed. He still felt the residual fear he’d felt when he saw Sofia’s men ready to kill Ed at the docks that day a month ago, but still the love persisted.

“It’s a dangerous game being in love; two murderers, one escaped from Arkham, and the other more than deserving of a padded cell….are you sure you want to take the risk on how wrong this can go?”

He grabbed hold of his tie pulling him down until his lips were a mere couple of inches from his own. “I’m sure” he responded before kissing him gently.


	2. Chapter 2

Ed found himself in the study late at night, he pushed his fingers back through his hair as he flipped through the pages of his journal, reading over old entries. Eyes scanned over the pages, teeth worrying his bottom lip as he read the desperate and defeated words of his younger self. He’d been crying before when he’d begun re-reading his old entries, but now the tears were simply dried up. 

He’d woken in the middle of the night from a nightmare, his past haunting him in a dream that felt far too real for his comfort. He knew that sitting up and reading through these torturous memories wouldn’t ease his mind, it was only fuel to the dark fire swarming in his skull. He closed his eyes, he groaned as he rubbed his hands over his face.

He leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. He wondered if there really was a way to just extract all the bad memories from his mind, he often worried that death was the only way to make it all end. 

He shook the thought from his mind, he closed the book and shoved it into the top desk drawer. He got up and made his way back upstairs to the master bedroom, he quietly closed the door behind him not wanting to wake the other man. He climbed back into bed and lay facing his partner, Oswald was still sleeping heavily, it’d take the world ending in fire and brimstone to wake him up. Ed sighed, he brushed too long strands of black hair out of his lover’s face. He remembered how he used to believe he’d never in a million years be like his father, what a lie that turned out to be. He thought about Kristen, he thought about the intrusive thoughts about her that hadn’t been quite his own but more like things his father would have said about a girl. He thought about the way he’d treated Oswald, the way he’d spoken to him in the past, hurtful things that to his own ears sounded more like his father’s mocking words. He hated thinking that he was like that man, but he felt he might be becoming like him.

He momentarily tensed as Oswald wrapped an arm around his waist holding him, he relaxed as he watched his boyfriend curl up against him hiding his face against his chest. He pet his fingers through his hair, smiling to himself as he watched him. Perhaps he could fix things, make things better; they’d been working on things for about a week now, it felt good to be working through their issues. He kiss the top of his head whispering to him that he loved him.

He did love him, it scared him, but he was in love with him. He didn’t know how it would end, if it could be everlasting, or perhaps if once more they would end up in a lethal game of cat and mouse. He hoped it wouldn’t end that way again, the thought of losing him permanently filled him with a sense of dread. For the moment he just felt protective, determined to keep him safe from harm. 

He pondered if he should tell him everything about himself, if the past really held any relevancy. He knew so much about Oswald, but in reality, he was a total mystery to the other man; Ed always preferred keeping himself a mystery to those around him, but for once he felt like spilling his guts. Perhaps that would help him purge himself of his fears and his demons.


	3. Chapter 3

Oswald impatiently tapped his fingers against the table. If he was being stood up again then he might genuinely burn everything to the ground out of pure rage. He checked again, Ed was now an hour late to their date, a date that Ed had been the one to arrange. Ever since deciding to properly give a relationship a chance things had been going along rather well, in a sense it was odd, but it was nice. They’d fall into a sort of pattern quite quickly, Ed almost immediately began sharing a bed with Oswald, no qualms about it. He was happy for the company and being able to fall asleep in his arms, there was a comfort in it. Of course, Oswald had a lingering paranoid fear that this would go South, that Ed’s feelings weren’t genuine after all, that he would begin pulling mind games and try to kill him with possible success this time around. He feared that right now Ed was off somewhere with some woman, somebody who could give him a life free of drama. 

His fears were squashed as he heard the front door slam shut. He felt strangely anxious as he listened to Ed’s shoes on the hardwood floor, he worried something was wrong, and he wasn’t sure why. He reached for his glass taking a long drink from it before his partner entered the room. He was rather taken off guard by his appearance when Ed entered.

“Sorry, I know I’m late, I just got rather um caught up to say the least.” He hurriedly explained as he seated himself on the chair to the left of the other man.

Oswald still stared at him, Ed grinned at him as if there wasn’t anything odd. 

Ed’s hair that normally was slicked back as a tangled curly mess, dark curls falling over his forehead, blood stained his cheeks and soaked the front of his white dress shirt. Oswald watched as he took a long drink from his own glass, emptying it, then pouring himself another.

“Ed, what happened?” Oswald asked, voice gentle.

He furrowed his brow looking at him in confusion.

“I told you, I got caught up. That job took a lot longer than I thought it would.” He replied forcing a smile. 

Ed turned his attention to his meal, Oswald watched him cut into his steak and noticed the dried blood on his fingers. None of this was exactly like Ed, neither side of him to be exact. In all the time he’d known him, his friend kept himself immaculate in terms of appearance, often hating to be dirty for longer than he needed to be. On a typical day he would have immediately rushed upstairs to shower and throw his clothes into the waste basket only to complain until Oswald made him something new, something flashier. This was out of the ordinary and he wasn’t sure if he should go along or dig deeper.

For the time being he kept quiet, he watched as the other man ate; he was quiet, focus on his food. Oswald watched as he used his fork to pluck away the onions that were mixed with the green beans, making a pile off to the side of the plate. He reminded himself he needed to just make a list of the foods that Ed refused to eat. 

“Darling, not that I’m intruding on your career, but I thought you were just pulling a robbery at the art gallery.” 

That’s what Ed had been planning out, the blueprints still laid out on the desk in the study. For a week now, he’d been working over the details of the building, working on mechanisms to make the job faster and more enjoyable. 

“I was going to, but something came up.”

“Did something go wrong?” Oswald inquired as he realized his questions were going to be evaded or answered as simply as possible.

Ed reached for his glass again, another drink, now he was going for his third.

“No, I’m a perfectionist Oswald, I just didn’t do the job. I had something else I needed to do instead.”

Oswald thought over personal vendettas, their list of enemies; he realized in that minute that he had far more enemies than his partner had. 

“So, you’re just not going to tell me?” He asked, agitation edging his words.

Ed looked up at him, confused before smiling mischievously. “If I did my job right then you should be hearing about it on the news at around ten, maybe sooner. I should probably shower, change into something more comfortable. Do you think you could make a new suit for me?” He asked as he got up from his seat.

“I-yeah, sure”

He watched as Ed turned and hurriedly left the room humming to himself. 

Oswald looked at the clock, fifteen minutes until it would be ten. He worried what he might have done. They’d decided when renewing their friendship that they could once more be business partners in a criminal sense, but that also they wouldn’t interfere in each other’s work. Oswald did his best to keep his word, but now he was worrying what Ed might have done. The last thing he needed was to have Gordon knocking on his door wanting to arrest Ed, he wasn’t entirely sure he’d have as easy a time breaking him out or blackmailing him out this time.

He got up from the table and went into the sitting room. He felt a growing anxiety as he turned the TV on, after a few commercials about bettering your life by buying over priced junk, the news came on.

A reporter stood outside of a decently sized home, behind her were swarms of paramedics and police. Oswald spotted a boy looking around Martin’s age being lead to an ambulance, a blanket around his shoulders, and something in his hand. 

“Earlier this evening police were called to this normally quiet neighborhood. A call came in from the home, reporting a break in and murder. The caller happened to be the son of the murdered couple, the boy is claiming a mysterious man entered the home, tied up his parents, and then proceeded to kill them while he watched. Details of the horrific crime and the names of the family are still being withheld at this time.”

A cold chill ran down Oswald’s spine.

Was this what Ed was caught up doing?

He turned the TV off turning away from it in disgust. Ed didn’t do things like this, it wasn’t his M.O. at least the cops would know that, there seemed to be nothing that tied Ed to the crime other than a living witness who seemed unwilling to talk. 

Oswald left the room, he went upstairs, he entered the master bedroom expecting to find Ed, but he wasn’t there. He could just faintly hear the shower running, he sighed in relief. He removed his jacket tossing it onto the foot of the bed, he went to the bedside table opening the drawer and pulling out his cigarette case and lighter. He gave one more glance towards the closed bathroom door before heading out the glass double doors and onto the balcony. He sighed as he felt the cold night air, he breathed in the scent of smoke and nature, a strange in between that he wasn’t sure one could ever grow accustomed to. He placed a cigarette between his lips, he flicked the lighter watching the glow of the flame in the mostly darkness, he inhaled as he lit his cigarette feeling himself relax as he plucked it from his lips and exhaled smoke into the air.

Why did Ed kill them, why leave the boy alive? 

He took another drag of his cigarette as he chastised himself for thinking Ed would kill a child, it was something none of them would do, even Zsasz didn’t kill children. The parents though, they didn’t seem like they had anything of value, the reporter mentioned nothing of a robbery. Break in, kill the parents, and then leave. 

Oswald tapped his foot against the ground annoyed that he couldn’t connect the dots, dots that were scattered and even when connected didn’t create an image, just another one of those damned question marks Ed loved so much.

“Did you figure it out yet?”

He jumped at the sudden sound of a voice, he turned to see Ed standing behind him. His hair was soaked, curling more than it had been before, he wore a white tank top, and extremely worn flannel sweat pants that Oswald had asked him repeatedly to just throw away. Oswald took another drag from his cigarette before holding it out in offer to the other man, Ed smiled softly as he took it from him placing it between his own lips.

“No, I didn’t…..Why the Hell did you kill them?” Oswald asked, exasperated. 

Ed stared out at the property, he watched as a stray cat startled the birds causing them to fly away knowing they were out of reach of a ground predator. He exhaled watching the smoke fade into the night sky, he pulled at his fingers watching as the cigarette began burning out, he took one last drag before snubbing it out against the metal banister.

“Do we ever need a reason to be murderers?” 

“Cut the bull shit Ed, this isn’t like you.” 

He looked over at him curiously, “You always act like you know me, before you found my journal you didn’t even know what sort of home life I’d had growing up.”

Oswald fell silent, he looked away for a moment. He kept to himself that after that incident he’d read a few more old entries from the journal, more tear stained pages documenting horrific physical and emotional abuse mixed amongst days that sounded almost hopeful. 

“How would I have known, you never told me.”

Ed shrugged, a small sad smile playing on his lips. “Normally that’s how I like to keep things and with you…..You’ve always been so proud of me, you’re the first person in my life who has been proud of me.”

Oswald reached out gently touching his arm, fingers brushing against soft skin. Ed looked down at his hand then up at him. “Do you want to guess why I killed them or do you want to leave it a mystery?”

The silence fell over them again, Oswald rubbed his fingers along Ed’s forearm as he thought about it. He stilled as a possible realization struck him.

“The parents, did they happen to abuse their son?” Oswald asked, voice soft.

Ed kissed the top of his head. “Ding ding, you are correct.”

“Why kill them though, I don’t….”

Ed placed a hand against his cheek, his touch hesitant as if he was scared to touch him. He stared down at him, thumb stroking against freckled skin for a moment before he pulled his hand away, his nervous fidgeting resuming. 

“I never got the chance to kill my dad for the things he did to me, the things he did to my mother. This guy, the man I killed tonight had a criminal record. He’s been in and out of jail for years now, it’s always public intoxication or his wife calling, because she finally had enough of the abuse. Each time she’d bail him out, a week later and another call….he never changed, she never got the courage to take her son and get the Hell away from him.” 

There was a sharp edge to his voice, a distant anger in his eyes as he glared down at the ground.

“What about their son, isn’t he going to tell on you, he saw everything.”

Ed shook his head, a smile playing on his lips. “He didn’t see anything. He hid in his room with his headphones on during the whole thing, I didn’t want him seeing or hearing any of that. When I broke in the dad had been in the middle of beating the kid…..Afterwards I got the kid, made sure he didn’t see any of it, pinky promised he wouldn’t tell the cops what actually happened. Just tell them a man in dark clothes broke in, killed his parents, and then left.”

Oswald stared at him trying to work through what he was feeling at the moment besides a fear that Ed was losing himself again like he’d done before. He remembered his erratic behavior from a year ago, the near suicide mission of a life he’d been leading before being frozen. 

“Promise me you won’t do anything like this again.” 

He nodded, still staring down at the ground.

Oswald reached out taking hold of his hand giving it a gentle squeeze. “Let’s go to bed, okay?” He led him back inside closing the door behind them.

When they got into bed he noticed the distance that Ed kept between them, it was unlike him.

“Are you okay?” Oswald asked as he reached out to brush his fingers through his hair.

“Perfectly fine.” 

He was lying, which was troubling.

Oswald scooted closer to him leaving very little space between them, he hid his face against his chest as he wrapped an arm around his waist. He didn’t know what was going on with him, admittedly it was scaring him, but he hoped the end result was something healthy. Perhaps he needed to work through this in his own way.


	4. Chapter 4

He formed a habit lately when they were in bed together. He found himself gently tracing his fingertips down over the bumped bridge of his nose, touching along his freckled cheek, and his jawline. He swallowed hard as he touched his cheek, remembering that night in the warehouse, the way Oswald had begged him to untie him, professed his love for him, and his response had been to scream at him, to hit him. He closed his eyes sighing as he remembered that night, that morning in vivid detail; if the fits of restlessness his partner had were any indicator then Oswald remembered it too. How could he not?

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

In the months since being thawed out, in the time since they’d been rebuilding their relationship he found it hard to apologize. Without it being said it seemed that Oswald had forgiven his transgression or at least as much as one could forgive such actions. 

He thought about his childhood; he remembered days of his parents fighting, his father slapping his mother across the face and telling her it was all her own fault, that he only hit her because she made him angry. Ed felt a sickness thinking about it, he could almost hear the palm of his father’s hand connecting with her cheek. He clenched and unclenched his own fist fearing in some regard he was becoming his father, becoming the man he hated and feared, the one who was safely locked away in prison until he took his dying breath. 

He had a man who loved him, who time and time again put his trust and faith in him, a man who trusted him with his own son. 

There were fleeting moments where he considered leaving, packing his things and disappearing before Oswald even woke up. He wasn’t entirely sure where he’d leave to, but the idea was in his mind, in the far corners with his fears and his self-doubts. 

“I love you” 

It was true, it had been true for far too long now. Even that early morning on the docks with the cold rain hitting against his skin stinging like needles and his hand shaking as he held the gun. He’d felt that love, he’d felt that tightness in his chest, the anxiety and the fear of what everything meant. He was scared that if he untied him, if they came back home then Oswald could hurt him again or possibly it’d be the other way around, and frankly both scenarios scared him. Scared him enough to pull the trigger, to shove his first love into the river and watch him sink with that shocked fear in ocean colored eyes.

‘Stop thinking about it.’

Quietly he slipped out of bed, he dressed himself and left the bedroom. He forced himself to think over poems and riddles, to think about the half-done projects set up in the basement that he either needed to complete or scrap before Oswald complained about all the scrap metal and half made bots and bombs lying around. His partner always hated the messes he would leave, prototypes and long forgotten plans. He told himself he’d work on cleaning up his work stations, he’d even organize the desk in the study, he knew how much it annoyed Oswald. He was kind enough to let him move back in with him, to open his home to him again, he hated cluttering up the spaces. 

As Ed entered the dining hall he found Martin seated at the long table, notepad in front of him as he scribbled away. Ed smiled softly as he approached him, the boy’s dark eyes focused on his latest work. Ed stood behind him and looked down at what he was working on, another drawing, this one of a man having his eyes ripped out of his head. A part of him questioned why the child was so horrifically morbid, but another part of him found it oddly precious.

“Your drawings are really coming along.” He mused as he patted the boy ono the shoulder.

Martin turned to look up at him, smiling sweetly. He sat his pen to the side and signed a quick ‘thank you’ before turning back to his work.

Ed made his way into the kitchen, he set up and started the coffee maker before going to the fridge, he pulled out the bottle of orange juice then grabbed a glass from the cabinet. He quietly sang to himself as he filled the glass then re-entered the dining hall, he sat the glass down by Martin’s notepad. The boy stopped to sign another ‘thank you’ before picking up the glass and taking a drink from it.

He seated himself on the chair next to the boy’s. It was mornings like these that made life feel strangely normal, domestic. It made him feel almost like he was a father, taking care of a child, and waiting for the coffee to finish brewing. For himself he’d had a handful of times growing up that were like that, where there would be peace; mornings where he’d find his mother in the kitchen singing to herself as she made breakfast. He smiled thinking about those times, the few and far between times his father would be in a good mental space, sober, and happy with his home life. It was all a puzzle he still couldn’t figure out, how one day his parents could be happy and caring, but the next day dishes would be thrown across the room and the screaming would carry well into the night.

He pondered what sort of home life Martin had had before ending up in the orphanage. As far as he knew Martin had never shared about his family with anybody, perhaps they were memories that were too utterly painful to share especially with how young he was. Ed supposed that all they could do was give him the best life they possibly could. In a way helping Oswald raise Martin felt like some sort of test, a way to see if he really was meant to end up like his father or not. When he thought about it he couldn’t imagine acting like his father had, he couldn’t imagine hurting this kid, he just wanted to protect him. He supposed perhaps there was hope for himself, that just possibly he wasn’t doomed to repeat his father’s mistakes, his rage, and his unbridled hatred. Still a sort of fear lingered inside his brain, a fear all this would come crashing down around him like other things had done in the past.

For the time being he forced the thoughts to the back of his mind, hid the doubts and the growing fears away so he could focus on what was good, commit the better parts to his memory just in case the day came he lost all this. 

“Hey how about you help me make breakfast.” He offered.

Martin pushed the pen and notepad to the side, he turned to look at him nodding in response. Ed smiled at him, he reached out ruffling the boy’s dark curly locks of hair. 

Ed got up from his seat, he made his way back into the kitchen, Martin happily trailing behind him. He resumed singing to himself as he went through the cabinet pulling out the mixing bowl as well as the pancake mix, he pulled out a bag of chocolate chips holding them up.

“Do you want chocolate chips?” 

The boy smiled nodding in response.

“Excellent choice” 

There was a sense of domesticity to the situation, something Ed used to only dream of having, but assumed he wasn’t deserving of. Maybe still he wasn’t, but for now he wanted to pretend that he deserved to have a family.


End file.
